Tesla Tells New Taxi, Uber Drivers Not to Use Its Superchargers | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Tells New Taxi, Uber Drivers Not to Use Its Superchargers

bloomberg.com

125 pointsfmihaila115 comments

I must say, the drivers who use their Tesla as an Uber do a hell of a job of representing the company and making the brand accessible.

I am not fully ready to purchase a car and don’t want to deal with a sales pitch, but got a great overview of the S and X from two different drivers on trips. I got to touch and play with the car. I got real feedback from people who spend far more time in the car than I ever will. Both left me with a positive impression and, as a result, I’ll likely seriously consider a Tesla when I am ready to buy a vehicle.

Almost all of those drivers don't supercharge all the time.

Isn't that the case with any car though?

I assume the chance of experiencing a Tesla is much lower.

Anecdotal but the only Uber/taxi driver who has ever started giving me an unsolicited tour of their car was a Tesla S owner.

The wording in the article's first paragraph can almost be read as if the policy applied to all Tesla cars used commercially, but the actual announcement is more clear:

> This Policy applies to all Superchargers worldwide and all Tesla vehicles purchased, either new or used, whether from Tesla or a third party, after December 15, 2017.

https://www.tesla.com/about/legal?#supercharger-fair-use

I updated the title accordingly.

I understand changing the policy for new sales going forward, but changing it unilaterally from used sales seems wrong.

But it does prevent a business trying to run off of free supercharger power from just buying up used Teslas...

I don't think that was the point of the post you're replying to. The point was that you might be annoyed that an invisible hand reached out and plucked away part of the value of the thing you owned and were about to sell to someone.

This is a lesson we seem to be learning over an over: Don't rely on services provided by others continuing to exist indefinitely. Whether it's your social media account or free charging for your car, if you aren't prepared for losing access to that service, you are guaranteed to have a bad experience somewhere down the line.

Which is why I'm not terribly sanguine about the current everything-as-a-service model. Going off a bit here, but aren't we kind of becoming serfs again, with ownership and power flowing into the hands of the corporations renting us their services?

To riff on your concept, I met a woman in SF who was signing up for a lease at an apartment building. Knowing that she'd just moved from the midwest, and therefore not used to living in a big city, I asked her how parking was. "Oh, I don't have a spot", she said, "but the apartment comes with a subscription to Luxe (the on-demand valet service)". A year later, Luxe went out of business - now I wonder how her parking situation is.

No, we're not becoming serfs, we're riding the tip of the wave, where more things are tried out and thus more things fail. There can be no progress without failure.

The gas for your not-Tesla has been provided as-a-service since the first internal combustion engine was invented, and gas has occasionally been unavailable for periods of time (and the price has risen to levels unimaginable just a few decades ago). You're not a serf because you don't stick to a horse and buggy (and keep a workshop for the buggy and a paddock for the horse on your own, private, non-mortgaged property), you're a citizen in a modern economy. Let's not even speak of how you get food.

All these things need to be worked out and be reliable and eventually they will be. Today, alas, was not that day.

I think the issue is of product vs. service. Most of the things you deal with still function as products - you pay for your food / car / gasoline up front, and you consume it when and how you wish. The gasoline you bought won't magically disappear from your car because its provider decided to change the mixture or update their TOS. You don't have to worry that your supermarket prohibits you from making french fries from potatoes, because your tier only allows boiling them. You don't need to enter into long-term relationships with businesses to access basic consumables; a purchase is a one-time operation, no strings attached.

I don't see it as an issue of reliability - which will always be a problem, because it's only natural for a business to eventually screw you over in the process of wringing out more profits from you. I see replacing products with services as something that limits your ability to live the way you'd like. It forces you to have a stable cashflow to support those services, since you no longer have a product that you can use until it wears out. It forces you to treat physical objects as black boxes - not tools that manipulate reality, but only tokens of services you subscribe to that you cannot open, cannot control, and cannot use beyond what's outlined in TOS. It forces you to engage in unnecessary business relationships with other people. All of that makes your life much more fragile.

Maybe this is a good fit for average middle/upper-class, healthy and mentally stable consumers, especially those without any curiosity and creativity to use items beyond their designated purpose. But it's not a good fit for everyone.

Now, if that was just an option, it'll be great - one could choose the ratio of products to services in their lives. But the market doesn't ask you what you'd like; you choose from what's available. Services are better than products from businesses' point of view, and therefore that's what's being offered (and with extra profit margins over products, services can dupe people into them by the virtue of being cheaper at the moment of signing a contract). I fear that eventually, we'll be left with pretty much everything delivered as a service, with companies dictating how you need to live your life (and screwing you over with impunity).

I don't agree that the situation is all that different. Early grocery stores represented a significant loss of control from growing your own. Early supermarkets represented a significant loss of control from the personal, local service of the grocery store. Early automobiles represented a loss of control from having horses in your own stable. And yes, all of those losses were to ever more distant and powerful commercial entities.

But they also brought significant benefits (things got a lot cheaper, especially in terms of time and effort), and it took a while for the loss-of-control/benefit balance to get worked out, but today nobody is seriously arguing that we're serfs because we write software for cash and then spend some of that on food and cars and gas (and a myriad of other things that we probably don't 'control' as such) instead of working the land.

I see replacing products with services as something that limits your ability to live the way you'd like.

Good phrasing. Although I do see it as a reliability problem (it is more so if you live in a less technically developed country with not-that-good foreign relation), the inability to have it my way has more immediate impact. The most visible thing is software UIs. If I had bought a product for a precise combination of its hardware and software features, it should be possible to keep away any cardinal redesigns. I still remember the auto-update from Android 2.7 to 3.x (or was it 4?) on my Samsung Galaxy SII, which totally broke the user experience.

Same with websites: nowadays you just can't buy a desktop version of anything, that not only limits the possibility of offline use, but also forces you to deal with unwanted updates. The solution seems to be to use stuff made for boring business customers. Ironically, that makes Apple a viable choice — business customers use them too, around the world, and they cannot ignore them.

Gas is a commodity, while these As-A-Service ( tempting to slightly misspell the acronym..) things tend to be all about lock-in. That's the problem.

But 'buying up used Teslas' is not some dodgy scheme, only to be considered by sketch operations. Buying used stuff is actually pretty common as a strategy for many businesses. It allows them to obtain things they need, but minimise capital costs.

In this (hypothetical) case it'd also be giving a saving on operating expenses, which would be attractive - but I can see why Tesla would be worried about their costs rising from the superchargers being used by taxis.

In general it seems fair not to allow businesses to abuse them since the pattern of use would be much more frequent and probably drawing more power. They're a perk for everyday drivers, not a way for Tesla to subsidise the operating costs of small businesses for free.

Actually, paying a driver to wait at a supercharger costs more than the electricity is worth. So yes, it's totally dodgy.

But charging at a regular charger would take 5-6x longer.

Almost all regular charging happens overnight, with no one waiting.

But if car is resource not to be wasted it would be driving Uber pax 24/7 minus charging and maintenance. Maybe 3 drivers per car. Sure, fewer pax at 5am but probably dependent on what city/market.

Yes for regular use, but if you want to use the cars commercially, supercharging will in many cases be better/much faster.

You can purchase a three-phase 230V / 80A wall charging station from Tesla.

If you are running a fleet and need a lot of capacity, then you can throw money at Tesla and get a private supercharging deployment (they've done it before).

> Actually, paying a driver to wait at a supercharger costs more than the electricity is worth. So yes, it's totally dodgy.

This is a business decision of the actual car owner.

Some Tesla features are written into contracts and some are not. For example, Tesla is not charging anyone for cellphone service for the car. That's not written into the contract, but they kinda have to provide it for free: they need access to vehicle logs for roadside service, and the car needs software updates for safety reasons.

As an owner, I have absolutely no idea what the contract ever said about supercharging. I also know that this change doesn't affect me, other than making it more likely that I can supercharge without waiting.

It hurts your resale value.

It might increase my resale value, if most buyers are like me (not commercial owners who always supercharge.) Which they are.

And? For those nothing changes, but overall there will be less demand.

Less congestion at superchargers == more value.

That's irrelevant, legally speaking.

Car companies can do plenty of things that hurt your resale value which are completely legal. They do it every time they lower the price, or bundle in more standard features. They do it every time they release the next model. They do it when hidden engineering short-cuts mean expensive repairs are necessary a few years after the warranty expires...

Until 2016, Tesla vehicles were marketed and sold with "unlimited, free for life" supercharging, with "life" meaning the lifetime of the car.

Obviously Tesla can change change their terms however they like on new vehicles that they sell.

However, to now go and retroactively remove/restrict this benefit when pre-2016 vehicles are resold seems wrong.

At least in Norway I suspect that it is also illegal.

Unlikely. I very much doubt any country would forcibly allow any parties to a contract sell their side of a contractual arrangement to any other third party.

And even if they were, I very much doubt Tesla's supercharging service T&Cs explicitly guarantee anything to anyone.

Teslas in Norway were until recently sold with free supercharging for the life of the car. It follows the car not the owner. It is presented in the documentation as a feature of the car along the same lines as the fact that it is four wheel drive not as a contract term. I'm not a lawyer but I suspect the courts here would take a dim view of that being unilaterally removed.

Selling an iPhone does not entail selling of the sim card and carrier service previously associated with it.

The supercharging is a service, not a product.

The people doing this are abusing the system and trying to take their benefit and sell it for profit.

This is something nearly every entrepreneur does.

I think you said "abusing" when you meant "using".

They've always been clear that the intention was to help people on longer journies, not provide free power. There's been all sorts of stories about them challenging perceived abuse of the system and I'd assume they have some small print from day 1 to support them in enforcing this.

"They've always been clear that the intention was to help people on longer journies, not provide free power."

That's right. And I think that most people would agree that if you're frequently "supercharging locally" instead of using your own chargers, then that's against the spirit of the supercharger network.

But this ban isn't directed just at those who are using local superchargers excessively when they have a valid alternative. It's a ban on the use of superchargers by any Tesla vehicle that is operated for any commercial use!

A blanket ban on "any other commercial use" is extremely far reaching:

- Rental car companies can no longer add Tesla vehicles to their fleets, as it will be impractical for renters to drive long distances.

- Taxi companies that sometimes get long-distance fares can no longer consider Tesla vehicles, because they could get stranded far away from their "home base" without access to the supercharger network.

- Businesses and government agencies who operate fleet vehicles will not be able to consider Tesla vehicles, because it will not be practical to drive long distances.

I believe this is a very short-sighted policy. A far better solution would be to simply charge fees to commercial users of the supercharger network. This would prevent excessive supercharger use, while still making long distance travel practical when necessary.

I'm reminded of the Tesloop episode of 'The Pitch' podcast. "Haydn Sonnad pitches his plan to revolutionize regional transit on the back of Tesla’s electric charging network." https://gimletmedia.com/episode/11-tesloop/

Hah first thing that came to my mind too.

They called him on this potentially happening too during the pitch.

I hope they bought all the Teslas they need!

I think the average owner hopes that they didn't.

Although there's a new 40-stall supercharger between Vegas and LA, so Tesloop probably isn't significantly harming the system at this point.

Can you still mine BTC from the trunk, so long as you do it solely for your own purposes?

Yes https://electrek.co/2017/11/29/tesla-mining-bitcoin-model-s-...

Note that an unmodified Tesla allows you to draw 120 watts from the cigarette lighter, not 2,800 like the claim in the article. Which likely false. Fun article, I see you clicked on it.

I really hope Tesla is successful at beefing up its supercharger network. If the proper phrase is "I have no dog in this hunt," I extend the analogy to "because I have a cat."

As an occasional driver of a Nissan Leaf in Puget Sound, the (in my observation) massive uptick in Tesla cars up here has really put a strain on the relatively tiny DC quick-charge network. Where that car can be in and out of a CHAdeMO station in 25-35 minutes, Tesla cars seem to occupy it for two hours. Presumably, and I'm just guessing, this is because a CHAdeMO station is to a Tesla what a 240V level 2 charger is to a Leaf. If I drive to a particular Eastside shopping center, I'd better hope I plan to be there for at least two hours because there's no chance of ever seeing an unoccupied one of the quick chargers there.

Either way, that's why I hope that either Tesla gets its superchargers more widely deployed or that some company takes the hint and builds more DC quick chargers. (Preferably more reliable ones, too, while I'm wishing for ponies. The one at the Lake City Fred Meyer seems to only have two states, occupied or broken.)

Leaf battery is 30kWh and even the smallest Teslas are double that (60kWh), most are triple (90kWh until recently was the largest).

Assuming they can all draw the same current it makes sense that teslas are lingering for 2-3 times longer.

The new 40kWh Leaf 2.0 offers similar range to the 60kWh Tesla, for comparison. Presumably this is due to weight etc.

How will Tesla enforce this policy? Tracking vehicle usage data, looking for lots of short trip patterns? Looking for rideshare decals (drivers would be wise to use removable decals)? Asking Uber/Lyft to share VIN numbers of registered cars?

Looking for cars with Uber placards parked at superchargers?

What if the placards are removable?

Why bother if you have access to vehicle and supercharging data?

Just saying, there are simple ways that don't involve deep statistical analysis of driving data.

Incidentally this is a reason I'll probably never buy a Tesla. I don't care for the manufacturer of my car to be logging every trip I take and every location I visit.

As if it's not already via your cell phone?

do all uber/lyft cars have identifying features? i thought those were optional.

Some cities require them, however they are removable stickers and you can easily take them off.

If you are looking for Uber drivers, your Tesla car could probably list cellphones that took a ride in itself by detecting wireless signals?

If X cellphones detected in Y amount of time, it might be suspect...

Just suspect cars that do more than x hours of driving per day, averaged over a long-ish period. Very, very few people do personal driving for tens of hours per week

"Expecting people to follow the rules."

This works better than you'd think.

Ok so I pull up and start charging my Tesla, then what?

Almost all Tesla owners rarely supercharge.

Your battery gets full and you drive off, having essentially stolen energy (more properly, parking-socket-time, which is the resource Tesla is trying to conserve) in violation of your contract.

It's the same answer you get for "OK so I stuff this candy bar in my pocket and walk out, then what?". Shoplifting is trivially easy too.

We know Tesla has extensive data. They know how much you charge and which vehicles observe a pattern that indicates commercial usage.

They could probably tell with a 2-sigma confidence rate and simply offer concessions to those improperly flagged.

Funny thing is that during the initial handshake with the supercharger, it doesn't even check if the VIN the car provides is a Tesla VIN. It's only used for logging purposes and it'll still provide charge anyway.

(You can test this by tapping into the CAN bus while the car is being plugged in. This was true at least a few months ago)

What's that usual disclosure statement for mutual funds? Past performance does not guarantee future returns.

I totally believe you, but that doesn't mean that won't change.

Of course. But I'm betting that they'll drag their feet as much as possible before implementing such blacklist. Just making an announcement saves so much engineering time :)

Maybe this is a dumb question, but why not just charge commercial users more instead?

Capacity. It doesn't do Tesla any good if they charge commercial users, they pay and block all the super chargers 24/7.

Your hypothetical scenario sounds like they just aren't charging enough.

Indeed - were the price to charge commercial vehicles close to the ridiculous $1 million/hour, and traditional owner rate was unchanged, Supercharger slots would open.

I don't think Tesla wants to be seen as "ridiculous" in an anti-customer way.

Isn't this approach pretty ridiculous for any commercial customer?

No. It costs more to pay a driver to wait to supercharge than the energy is worth.

More likely Tesla understands that charging will increase congestion, not reduce it. See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomic...

The article actually does a horrible job of explaining the moral of the story, which is that charging a fee to discourage undesirable behavior can signal that the behavior actually is desirable or at least not disapproved (after all, you paid it, so you should get to enjoy what you bought), causing even more of the behavior.

Tesla is not trying to make money; they're trying to stop the behavior. So either they raise the price so high for commercial users that it's outright punitive, or they just say it's prohibited and skip all the money mechanics.

They chose the simpler option.

> So either they raise the price so high for commercial users that it's outright punitive, or they just say it's prohibited and skip all the money mechanics.

This sort of assumes the utility of a supercharger is the same to any commercial user, but it might not be, and a money cost would help keep capacity available for those commercial users without impacting non-commercial use too much.

That said, it seems like commercial fees could be turned around and reinvested in more superchargers pretty quickly. For now, they're significantly damaging the commercial value of their vehicles, new and used. Maybe they don't consider that a problem (and I would be surprised if any Tesla made an economical taxi, even before losing supercharger access).

Sorry, where's the proof that there's any damage to vehicle value? If anything I see positive value in this announcement, and am hoping it gets rid of the limo drivers I always see at the Hillsdale supercharger.

It's not positive value if you were intending to sell your Supercharging-enabled car to one of those limo drivers.

There's plenty of demand for used Teslas. And demand will likely increase a tiny bit if people are confident that they'll be able to find a supercharger stall the few times a year that they want one.

Tesla is also planning to roll out their own ridesharing platform[1], so it seems like they might have an interest in discouraging the use of their cars in competing taxi services, beyond just the economics of the supercharger stations.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-rideservices/tesla-...

I suspect Tesla learned that lesson when they imposed idle fees for cars that had finished supercharging and didn't move to free up the stall.

The first thought I had was of that Freakanomics article.

Again, they'd just not be charging enough.

The Israeli daycare study is an example of people being able to buy convenience and pay-off guilt when it's inconvenient to be on time, every now and then, through a small payment of a few dollars, which is peanuts compared to the actual cost of a typical daycare. Rest be assured, if they had to pay a $200 fine and had to do it structurally as a commercial user, it'd be a completely different story.

Not that I think it makes sense to charge commercial users at this point, but that's for other reasons...

Just my speculation, but from the article and Tesla's announcement, it looks like this is an availability thing given Tesla's current scale, not a cost thing per se. Ie., they're not worried that commercial users are consuming too much electricity or anything like that, rather the limited resource in question is the actual number of physical spots at a supercharger area, which is a hard thing to scale quickly. Eventually we can expect that electrical car infrastructure will become sufficiently ubiquitous that it won't be an issue, but for now in a still relatively early bootstrapping stage of things I presume that Tesla is concerned that their customers feel as little anxiety or charging irritation as possible. Tesla is most interested in raw numbers of customers (necessary for efficiencies of scale) rather then how hard each customer is using the car, so they want superchargers build out optimized for serving the maximum number of customers regardless of price.

You're right that maybe long term they could set up more to serve commercial capacity on the back of higher commercial prices, but particularly in metro areas acquiring land, permits, and so forth and building physical infrastructure isn't quick.

Thanks for the great analysis.

I get the feeling that they don't want to charge different rates to different customers (for some marketing related reason, perhaps?) and that they also want to minimize costs for non-commercial customers that are buying their costs (subsidize your complements?).

How will they enforce this for rideshare drivers?

How do they know whether you use it commercially or personally? I think I know the answer and it's disconcerting.

Send you a friendly letter if miles per week exceed a treshold?

What if I don’t want them to track me.

As far as I know, that isn't an option

It's really hard to fill up your battery, without learning how much juice you have used. They don't have to track you, they can just follow the amount of power spent.

Shouldn't have bought a Tesla and parked it in their free fueling stations.

And the reality is back, teaching the maths

“We may also take additional action to protect the availability of Superchargers for their intended purpose, such as limiting or blocking your vehicle’s ability to use Supercharger stations.”

say what. is it well known that tesla can brick your car whenever they feel like it?

They have root and a comm line, they can.

Same with Amazon taking back Kindle books a few years ago.

Also your smartphone. Not yours.

Nowadays "buy" means "rent". Pick a landlord.

somehow it feels way bigger deal if my car is bricked.

The car will be alright, you just can't charge it for free.

Yeah but the fact that they have the ability to block this means they can block other things too.

They would block the output of the charger, not the input of your car.

My hope: Tesla succeeds at making real things and has a stock valuation that accurately reflects their intrinsic value while providing sufficient support to fund new ventures.

Is that too much to ask?

An Uber driver can afford a Tesla??

They can and they do. I talked to an Uber driver with a model s in Amsterdam. Leases it with his brother for about €1600 per month and still makes profit.

There are Tesla Ubers/taxis all over Amsterdam. It's a tax thing, a typical Mercedes taxi would also cost 1200 / month and then much more in fuel than the Tesla.

which only works until the govement notices the tax loss ad changes the tax laws basing a business on a tax loop hole is a high risk stratergy

Apparently right now environmentalism is a quite good justification for such lowered taxes. After all taxis are some of the most actively driven vehicles in the streets of any country.

Well in the UK it was a tax break for rich middle class people - not going to help a single parent who buys her electricity on a key system.

The single parent doesn't get any benefit from less pollution and less global warming?

No She just pays even more on an already more expensive tariff

If it's a monthly lease, then that means they can very easily switch if the laws do change.

Yes. A Silicon Valley friend of mine with a Tesla drove Uber for a while because he was between jobs ("camping") and was curious about Uber's business. He's not the only one. Also, I believe that Uber now counts Teslas as limos for the Uber Black service.

If they're black though. This black rule can lead to funny situations - one time a silver brand new Merceses S-Klasse came to pick me up for the Pop price.

Oh no Bjorn, what is he going to do?

this kind of retroactive changes to their policies with regards to supercharges can end up biting them in the butt. it demonstrates that they consider nearly all promises changeable.

though when the III becomes widely available I fully expect a whole host of other issues come about and some segments of their user base to demand exclusions for those they think make unfair use of the chargers.

having been disconnected from a public charger by another EV owner who flat out told me i did not drive a real EV (its a Volt) I have found there are some real entitled thinking people driving these days

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